The Telephone

The original number phone number found in some of the early marketing materials note the exchange  as  Vandyke – 9540.   Later, after the invention of the Area Code,  the nations first area code encompassed the town of Hamburg and was “201″.    So,  the Castle’s number became “201-827-9540.”

We are not sure when the Gingerbread Castle began to have a telephone. If you can figure out when the Castle first got its own telephone, please let the Gingerbread Librarian know so that we can update this entry!

A short history of early telephone innovations in Sussex County can be found at this link.

This is a what a phone looked like in 1930. It had a rotary dial to enter the numbers.  This is a vintage 1930′s phone, fully restored in 2011, and is used today by the Gingerbread Librarian’s family in New Jersey.